


Closure

by Nicxan



Category: Five Nights at Freddy's
Genre: A corpse is described in Grisly Detail, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Fire, Gen, Minor Character Death, Rotting Bodies And How They Fall Apart: A Michael Story, ghost therapy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-11
Updated: 2019-09-11
Packaged: 2020-10-14 17:07:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,400
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20604302
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nicxan/pseuds/Nicxan
Summary: The kids weren't the only ones hurt by William's actions.





	Closure

**Author's Note:**

> Big thanks to Captain Addict for the editing, this is much more readable now.

Michael had never really enjoyed haunted house attractions. They were loud and noisy. He couldn’t stand people screaming at him or running at him with a prop weapon, even though he knew it was all fake. The sets were always done too well. The lights always disoriented him, even as a kid. The rooms horrified him, always making him feel unsafe and uneasy.  
  
It wasn’t fun for him to say the least.  
  
He hadn’t anticipated putting in an application to work at one either, but he hadn’t expected to be a walking corpse. Life threw plenty of curve balls, and Michael knew that very well by now.  
  
_“It’s gonna be totally rad, dude,” Rob said casually as he jotted down a few notes. He slumped back in his chair, waving off one of the flies in the office. His dirty blond hair was a mess, just as much of a mess as his … interesting outfit. He hadn’t seen anyone try to make the too-loose khakis with the tacky Hawaiian print shirt combo work for years, yet here he was._  
  
_He grabbed a clipboard from nearby and rolled over on an absolutely ancient rolling chair. The sound of the wheels on the tile made Michael cringe._  
  
_ “Just sign right here, y’know, legal stuff --” He snorted, and then handed the clipboard over to Michael. “And you’ll be all good to go. First shift tomorrow’s at, like, midnight. You good with that?”_  
  
He hadn’t been. It took everything he had to not tell Rob off for capitalizing on Freddy Fazbear’s very real horrors for cheap scares. He wanted to lash out, to take everything out on him, to yell at him on the children’s behalf. But once Michael thought about it, he had held off. Rob didn’t _know_ that kids had been killed. He didn’t _know_ that it was a real tragedy. As far as Rob knew, it was just an urban legend. What good would yelling do? So, Michael had remained silent.  
  
He’d get his time to do what he needed to do. There was no possible way his father could avoid something this enticing. It was his restaurant, revived in some way, and it would be a beacon to him. It simply had to be. All Michael had to do was play his part as the ‘night guard’ and wait patiently for the right time to strike.  
  
Things started to fall into place much faster than he had expected; it had taken only two days for his father to arrive at Fazbear’s Fright.  
  
It was a battle from the moment it hit midnight – a physical and mental one. The physical battle was to keep Springtrap at bay, to outsmart his father at every single turn. The vent doors would slam shut. Balloon Boy’s voice echoed through the halls to lure away his would-be killer. His hands would slam on the terminal, willing it to restart faster. Noise, noise, noise. So fitting for a haunt.  
  
The mental battle, however, was a silent one. Every instinct screamed for Michael to end this immediately, to end his suffering and to burn the name of the establishment to the ground. He didn’t want even a ghost of a memory of Fazbear’s left. For the children to be at peace, the entire place needed to fade from people’s memory. Otherwise, they would keep getting things like _this_.  
  
Fazbear’s Fright needed to go.  
  
There was nothing that Michael could do for the first few days aside from defend himself, though. He was too busy putting the pieces together to really get a chance to do something about the facility. After all, the children came first. They needed to be put to rest. Once they were at peace, he could rest too. Knowing that had kept him going for the past thirty years.  
  
Sometimes, that was all that kept him _functional_.  
  
Michael fought through the nights, tuning out the tape recordings that Rob had set up to go through the night shift. The similarities to his old night shifts would have made him feel sick if he still could have. To remember the outdated animatronics that trudged down the hallways. He could still hear their moans, the way the floor creaked underneath them. Even now, he could see how their eyes pierced right through him as they tried to get through the doors. All of these tapes made him recall it all so vividly. Maybe that was a blessing in some ways – he adjusted to his new night guard job that much faster because of it.

  
After the sixth night, though, he had to be finished with investigating everything. The little souls that had been stuck here for so long ate away at his resolve. They whispered to him, pushed him to finish faster. To put them to rest faster. The fright was supposed to be open in a few days, and he simply couldn’t let that happen. Everything had to come to an end – now. And Michael had the perfect plan.  
  
It would all burn.  
  
If all the relics were burned to the ground, only ashes would be left. If the building crumbled, said ash and whatever was left would be buried underneath it. It would be hellish to dredge everything up. Fire would be cleansing; perhaps it would feel cathartic to the children too, to burn away that final part of the thing that kept them tied here.  
  
Michael arrived far before midnight, far too early for his shift. Not that his ‘hours’ mattered that much anymore; with Rob gone, no one else was here to help work on the haunt. There were a couple of contractors and a couple of part-timers, but they didn’t stay too late. At this time of night, he would be alone. He had to get it all burned before midnight – that’s when Springtrap would ‘wake up’. If his father got his hands on him, Michael knew that he wouldn’t be able to finish what had been started.  
  
So, he moved quietly. His dead arms almost popped out of his sockets numerous times while dragging the canister of gas around, but Michael’s unearthly determination kept him going. He would go through the haunt, entrance to exit, pouring the gasoline in every crevice of every corner. No stone was left unturned; he would get everything.  
  
He’d cringe while pouring the gasoline onto an authentic Foxy head, sure, but sacrifices had to be made. It hurt his cold, dead heart to splash some on the scribbles on the wall; kids drew those with love.  
  
There were some rooms that had always remained shut. These were the emergency exits, to be used in case said fire actually occurred, or if someone got too scared to leave (unlikely). In an already old building, getting these open would be an ordeal in of itself. The rusted metal doorknobs cracked and creaked while Michael tried to turn them, and it took a good push or two to get them to open at all. He forced himself through, dragging the half-empty canister behind him.  
  
He froze when he saw something sprawled in the middle of the near pitch-black corridors.  
  
On first glance, it just looked like an extremely grisly prop that Rob had left around. Michael wouldn’t put it past him to add some ‘bodies’ to represent some of the murders in the pizzeria; it would’ve been good shock value. Maybe he hadn’t had time to add it to the haunt. Maybe that’s why it was out here. Michael moved to throw some of the gasoline on it, then paused when one of the lights from a nearby room illuminated the prop just a bit more – to show that it wasn’t a prop at all.  
  
Dull, dirty blond hair framed a nearly-unrecognizable face. It had been maimed beyond recognition. The eyes had been squished into their sockets, the nose broken, the jaw snapped to the side – and the limbs were bent at impossible angles. There was a ripped-up Hawaiian shirt caked in blood.  
  
Rob.  
  
Michael stumbled backwards, instinctively covering his mouth with his rotting hand. Springtrap had done this the night he arrived at the haunt – he was sure of it. ‘_No one deserves a death like this_,’ Michael thought to himself sadly. His father could be ruthless, when he wanted to be. Apparently, the extra strength from the suit only enabled this.  
  
What would he tell people? Did Rob have a family he needed to write to, to express condolences, to give them some answers? Considering no one had mentioned him going missing, he couldn’t help but wonder if there was anyone around to care. Most likely not.  
  
His heart went out to Rob. It really did. But he didn’t have time to dwell on all of this. Michael forced himself to look away from the bloated corpse and continue down the hallway. He felt the gas canister tremble in his looser grip, but opted to ignore it.  
  
He had to focus, even when Rob’s mutilated corpse threatened to haunt him for the rest of his ‘life’.  
  
He had to ignore the sounds of the haunt ambiance around him, the way it echoed through the halls. The ghostly, light footsteps running around the darkened halls were easy to tune out. Those were the children – the ones he had to save. The muffled sounds coming from the other end of the haunt, though ...  
  
… What was that?  
  
‘_Focus!_’ Michael blocked out the strange noise, refocusing on his task. He’d finish this hall, then go back in and splash the last hall from afar so he could just keep moving through. It was simple for a while – walk, pour, walk, pour, walk, almost trip on your own finger that was on the floor –  
  
Damn. Why did he forget his gloves tonight, of all nights? The last thing he needed was more body parts falling off.  
  
Michael sighed and crouched down, feeling around for his missing index finger. It barely even registered when they popped off anymore; he needed to put his gloves in an impossible-to-miss spot before this happened again. It didn’t take him too long to find it and reattach it to his hand, a sickening ‘crack’ echoing through the room as he did so.  
  
The brief pause allowed him to hear those muffled sounds again. It was that much closer. Louder. Impossible to ignore. It was definitely coming from the office, he was sure of that much, since it was coming from the left. Michael let himself listen closer, squinting his eyes as best he could.  
  
It sounded like sobbing. Heavy sobs that would make anyone’s soul ache, cries that would haunt Michael’s dreams alongside Rob’s remains.  
  
‘_Who …?_’  
  
He recognized the _children’s _sobs, but this wasn’t even close to it. It sounded like an adult, and a vaguely familiar one on top of that. Michael furrowed what was left of his brow, then began to wind through the rest of the haunt to get to the last room.  
  
‘His’ spot.  
  
The office was recreated faithfully – Michael had seen to that once he learned he was going to be a ‘security guard’. He had chalked it up to ‘being really into the place’ when he was younger, and it had been a good move since he was still in one piece. At the moment, it looked like no one was in there. Really, that made what he heard even more spine-chilling.  
  
The sobbing was the loudest it had ever been, but it sounded like it could be coming from anywhere. Michael glanced to the left, the crying continued on the right. He looked to the right, and there was nothing there. He slowly turned around, making a full circle, only pausing when he noticed a faint outline of a suit slumped near the door.  
  
His body may have been dead, but Michael remembered what it was like to panic. The sudden jump, the ‘adrenaline rush’, the sheer panic when he remembered that exact suit trying to kill him. He stumbled backwards as he let out a pathetic little cry and instinctively threw his arms up to cover his face.  
  
A few seconds later, much to his extreme surprise, he was still conscious. There wasn’t a horrific, inhuman scream coming from the suit. Only that crying. It didn’t even lunge towards him.  
  
Even so, it still took a few seconds to muster the courage to say anything. “… Hello?”  
  
He didn’t get a response aside from the suit twitching. If his vision had just been a little worse, or if he wasn’t so used to ghosts, Michael wouldn’t have seen the movement at all.  
  
“It’s … it’s all right.” Michael crouched down so he could meet ‘eyes’ with the suit. “Why are you crying?”  
  
“_Who’s – who’s there?_” Michael recognized the panicky, stuttering voice immediately. It was the voice on the phone during his shifts and the voice on the tapes. He stared dumbly for a few moments, letting his jaw go fully slack. “_William? Is that you?_”  
  
Hearing his father’s name snapped him back into reality.  
  
“No. I’m his son. It’s … it’s Michael.” He tried to bite back his irritation, he truly did – but he couldn’t manage it. It wasn’t the first time Michael had to correct someone about his identity, but it never got any less frustrating.  
  
However, the ghost in the suit didn’t even seem to notice his irritation. “_You sound so much like him._” He sounded almost wistful, as if he was pining for … William, of all people? “_Michael … Michael … have we met before? Do I know you?_”  
  
‘_It’s been at least thirty years. You forget things as a ghost. It’s been thirty years. This is normal. Don’t let him see you panic._’ Michael repeated these mantras to himself silently, over and over, to try and keep the worry at bay. Ghosts were more volatile than living beings; their emotions were unpredictable and could change on a dime. He didn’t want to risk being hurt.  
  
“Yes. I worked with you before Freddy’s closed.” He forced a smile and a neutral tone, anything to keep his former trainer talking. “You helped me with the calls. Remember?”  
  
“_Calls?_” The suit’s head lolled to the side, its hat slipping ever so slightly. “_I called you?_”  
  
“You did. A lot.” He considered embellishing on how those calls had helped him survive. But if he didn’t recall those at all, what would the point be? It would waste time. “I got to listen to you a lot,” Michael said instead. “Can you tell me your name, though? I never got to hear it.”  
  
The silence on the spirit’s end did nothing to ease Michael’s nerves.  
  
Eventually, however, the spirit spoke. His voice trembled, wavering on almost every word. “_… I think my name was Eric. I don’t know. It’s been so long._” He sounded so unsure of himself, so hesitant, but Michael had to take what he could get. He nodded, widening his false smile.  
  
“Can I call you that?”  
  
“_Sure._”  
  
It was a start – one that he didn’t expect. Getting a name after at least thirty years was definitely something. Maybe Eric had a stronger grip on his mind that Michael had thought.  
  
“So, Eric … what’s going on? Why are you stuck here?” Michael shifted to sit cross-legged in front of the suit Eric was stuck in, resting his arms on his lap. “I didn’t think you’d be here, of all places.”  
  
He technically wasn’t lying. Eric had sounded so resigned to his fate on that last phone call, like he had already made peace with his demise. Like he had been expecting it. And considering he had made preparations for it, that couldn’t be his “untimely” death that would keep him tied here.  
  
So what was?  
  
“_William ..._” the ghostly voice whimpered. “_Where’s William? I need him back. I’m lost without him._”  
  
Michael’s shoulders drooped.  
  
“When did you last see him?” he asked delicately. The last thing he wanted to do was provoke an already miserable spirit in any way. Especially one that was unstable like this. “You can tell me. It’s safe. You won’t be hurt.”  
  
It was a few seconds before he heard Eric again – and he sounded even more distraught than before, with every few words being interrupted by heaving sobs.  
  
“_He … he was trapped, springtrapped, we called it springtrapped because of the springlocks. It happened to employees before. He got into the suit, I saw it, and he … he ..._” Eric broke down, his speech becoming incomprehensible. All Michael could do was listen with a heavy heart and wait for it to die down.  
  
“_I loved him so much. He wasn’t as kind as he used to be, but it was my fault he wasn’t. I wanted to make it right. I wanted him to love me again, and now … now ..._” The Golden Freddy suit twitched, and its head drooped forward. “_What am I going to do when he’s not here? I need him to tell me what to do. I’ve been so lost._”  
  
“He’s ...” Michael trailed off, initially unsure of how to handle this. Of course, William was physically here – in spirit and in body. But in mind? If Springtrap didn’t even recognize his own _son_, even with the voice, he surely had to be too far gone to recognize someone that was clearly just a toy to him.  
  
“He’s not here,” Michael continued. He ignored Eric’s whimpering and pressed on. “He’s not coming back.”  
  
The dismayed wail from the suit pierced Michael’s ears, leaving his rotten teeth rattling inside of what was left of his mouth. Michael cringed and covered his ears reflexively. It stopped as quickly as it started, replaced by babbling that he could barely decipher.  
  
“_No, no no no, _no_, he can’t … be gone ... I need him! He told me that, and he’s right, I can’t go on without him! Please, please, I can’t … I can’t ..._”  
  
Michael clenched his fists tightly, shaking in silent anger. He had never seen Eric in person before, but so much made sense now – the extra car in the driveway when he got out of school early, gifts from ‘sales meetings’, the nights William had spent on the phone when he was just a teenager, leaving him alone to grieve his brother –  
  
“You can.” He sounded sharper than he had meant to. “You can. My father lied to you. You don’t need him.”  
  
Golden Freddy twitched again. The movement reminded Michael of a short circuit, almost like the mere idea was impossible to comprehend. Maybe it was, to Eric. Perhaps it was a bit too much a bit too fast.  
  
He couldn’t rush this, no matter how much he wanted to.  
  
“Listen,” Michael whispered. “It sounds like you loved him a lot. But can you remember a time he showed it back?”  
  
“_Yes,_” Eric sighed dreamily. It was the happiest he had sounded so far, and it was such a quick answer. “_He always praised me. He … he appreciated everything I did. He didn’t ignore me when I needed something. And he was so warm when he held me. When I did things right, he … he was amazing._”  
  
“When you did things right?”  
  
“_Yeah._”  
  
“What about when things came up?” Michael prodded. “No one can be right all the time. How did he treat you then?”  
  
“_I ..._” Eric didn’t respond further. Michael still felt his presence in the room, so he hadn’t left. But the silence spoke volumes in of itself. All Michael had to do was wait for the answer he knew was coming. Eventually, his patience paid off.  
  
“_He was disappointed in me. He told me that I could do better, that I had done better, and … and …_” Michael heard a sniffle. “_… he didn’t talk to me for days if I had really – if I had really messed up._”  
  
“Days? _Really?_”  
  
“_Y-yeah, when I deserved it. It’s okay, though – all I had to do was just work harder. Then he’d talk to me again. If I kept acting like he wanted, then he wouldn’t be mad. It’s … it was easy, once I worked hard enough ..._”  
  
Michael sat in stunned, horrified silence. How long had Eric been broken down, piece by piece, to be remolded into someone completely different? How many years had he been pushed around, led astray by promises that William had no plan on fulfilling?  
  
How many people had William done this to?  
  
How many people had he _hurt_?  
  
“… That’s not right, Eric. Listen to yourself.” He wished he could reach out and touch his shoulder. A ghost probably wouldn’t have minded a rotting hand there, and it was more comforting than anything else he could do. But when he tried, his hand phased through the suit.  
  
All he had were his words.  
  
“If someone really loved you, they wouldn’t want you to be anyone except you. That doesn’t sound like what happened,” Michael murmured as soothingly as possible. “It doesn’t sound like you were very happy. I wouldn’t be either if I had to constantly prove myself to someone who said they loved me. Especially when they ignored me if I didn’t do exactly what they wanted.”  
  
“_But I was so happy … he made me feel good about myself. He made everything worth it._” Eric was clearly grasping for straws, anything to keep what he thought he had alive. “_If he didn’t like me, he would’ve left me. He said he would if I kept messing up._”  
  
“Why would he do that when you always did what he wanted? All he had to do was find what made you want to do that and use it.”  
  
“_… So … he didn’t …?_” The utter betrayal in Eric’s voice made Michael’s soul ache. A part of him felt shame for ruining the one thing this spirit was holding onto, the only thing that kept this spirit together, but it was too big of a lie to ignore.  
  
Especially when it was the lie that held him here.  
  
“No,” came the simple, blunt answer. “He didn’t. I’m sorry, Eric. You didn’t deserve this.”  
  
Michael braced himself for a mournful sob or an earth-shattering wail that would shake the room. He waited for the uncontrollable crying that he had heard when this all started, only that much worse. He was ready for any sound at all – anything.  
  
Instead, the spirit in the suit remained completely silent. It twitched now and again, and sometimes Michael could see a dim prick of light in the suit’s hollow eyes, but there wasn’t anything else.  
  
Nothing but a heartbroken, shaky request.  
  
“_I don’t want to say here anymore,_” Eric whimpered. “_I want to go. It hurts so bad._”  
  
“You’ll be out of here soon. I’ll make sure of it, Eric. You don’t need to worry about anything anymore.”  
  
Michael struggled to stand up – his limbs always seemed to be stiffer than normal when he sat for a long time – and grabbed the gas canister on his way out. He spread the gasoline around the haunt with renewed vigor, his anger at his father fueling him. He tossed it up higher, splattering the walls and ceiling. He spread it as evenly as possible, ensuring that no matter which way Springtrap went, that he would be trapped.  
  
He had trapped multiple people in suits for years and years. It only seemed right.  
  
Michael strode past the office confidently, only sparing one glance at the corner near the door. The suit was still there, slumped over unceremoniously. Eric was silent still, but Michael could feel the spirit watching, waiting to see if another Afton would bail on his promise just like his father would have.  
  
He pulled a box of matches out from his pants pocket. His hands started to shake as he tried to light a single one, and he nearly jumped once a match caught. He stared at the resulting flame for a moment, watching it dance before his eyes.  
  
Then, Michael let it drop to the floor. The single fire erupted into a rapidly spreading inferno, engulfing the haunt and all within it in its all-consuming heat. Michael felt his clothes burn away, and how his skin seemed to sear under the licks of the blaze. He remained completely still, more than ready to accept his final fate –  
  
And then an unseen force pushed him out of the exit. It wasn’t the children – too strong for that – but he didn’t have time to try and figure out who exactly it was. The cold burst of air made Michael cry out, and he tumbled out of the burning building. His rotting corpse was singed, his jacket burned, and one of his fingers gone, but –  
  
Why?  
  
“No!” Michael staggered back up and tried to rush back into the flames. The door slammed shut in front of him, and no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t push it back open. Something (or someone) held it shut.  
  
“Let me back in!” He pounded against the door, screamed himself nearly hoarse, and slammed what was left of his body up against the barrier – but it did no good. He felt the boiling heat on the other side. Yet he was denied it.  
  
Michael slumped to his knees, giving one more weak pound against the door. He had been so close – so close to being free. Peace was within his grasp, and it – it –  
  
No. This was for the other victims. This wasn’t for him. He couldn’t think so selfishly. As exhausted as he was, he couldn’t be bitter – not towards wayward spirits. Even so, Michael wished he could cry. Even as he made his body shake, no tears fell.  
  
“_You need to go,_” a high-pitched voice whispered. This one was familiar to Michael – the voice of a young girl, the one who had been put in Chica. “_They can’t see you here, or you’ll get in trouble._”  
  
The warning was enough for Michael. He rose to his feet reluctantly and rushed away from the blaze as fast as he could.  
  
“_Thank you._” He wasn’t sure who that one was – it seemed like a combination of different spirits. Fritz’s voice had faded in just as Susie’s faded out, overlapped by Eric’s mid-word. Then, there was nothing else.  
  
The fire had burned away any remnants of what had been. Everyone haunted by William’s actions and Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza – _everyone_ – could finally rest. They could have their closure.  
  
Michael found comfort in that.


End file.
